lucipinnis help needed

[FTLOSM]

Hey all, i have 17 syno lucipinnis in my 75 gallon tank, i keep the water very clean with 2 110 filters going full blast and do regular water changes, 80-82 degrees, have also confirmed my ph levels average 8 to 8.2 and everything else seems to be in line as well.

This is what I am using to try and get them to breed, a clear bowl, black/silver marbles, and a flowerpot with top and front hole in it.



I had these guys in their own 29 gallon tank with a bowl of marbles with the flowerpot over it (to try and have them spawn) yet after a good 8 months I got zero results.

I finally decided to just put them into my main 75 tank (since it is in the livingroom and i enjoy seeing them in there), yet still after a good year and half no spawning, i did try for a few months again to keep a bowl of black marbles in there with flowerpot over it, but after hours of watching them i never even see them IN there much less spawning.

I decided to put the bowl back in recently stil trying but curious what i might be doing wrong?

I got a few long tube/acorn-like catfish breeding things as well, again never once have i seen them IN it.

I know with having so many there has to be a male/female mix in there somewhere, they are very active little fish and are always scanning the bottom and sides of the tank, yet I have had ZERO success in getting them to mate in anyway.

PLEASE if anyone here knows what i can try or do let me know as I really like this fish but can't afford to buy more but really want more in all my other tanks in the house eventually.

My other fish (yellow labs, acei, red shoulders) breed like MAD so I know conditions for the fish are good, just haven't been able to get these catfish to breed to save my life...

Do I just watch that bowl of marbles till i see stuff at the bottom i assume are eggs then pull it and tumble the eggs?
I do check with a flashlight often but haven't seen anything in there that looks like iny eggs or anything.

Bill

[FTLOSM]

Tonight i sat and watched the tank for a bit, and spotted one of my catfish looking VERY puffy, hoping its a female full of eggs?



Do they store eggs in the tummy then spit out and get fertilized by the male?
Do I need to remove her (are the eggs fertilized already?)

Do you guys think this one has eggs in her stomach (my wishfull thinking) or is she sick - or just fat? hehe


Bill

[worton[pl]]

Hey,

spawning fish, especially catfish needs a lot of patience and usually they just do it.
My advice is to do some search on this forum - you will get an image how to start it.
Also very important thing is temperature. It looks like temp. drop to 23 C and then rising it back to 27 helps .
Feeding also is important. Some time ago there was also a discussion about using black marbles - usually even regulary spawning group will avoid this black coloured balls .
Second thing is - your fish could have spawned before but not in marbles - they do not use this constuction in the wild so there is no need for them to use it in aquarium.
Imho it is much better to spawn them once or even more withoug marbles and then just try with marbles. If you have a normal tank with a lot of rocks they will probably choose rocks to spawn not marbles. And then all other fish will just eat eggs and then babies so you won't see effect .
Watch your fish carefully .

Here is a breeding record I have on my Hdd. My apologises to the Author - I didn't write your name down .

Rich, I am glad to be back breeding fish again, even though it took me a few weeks to read and search through all the Forums it seems like I didn’t miss out that much.

There has been a lot of theories & misconception about breeding Syno. Petricola, I'm here to prove or disprove some of what I read, this is just based on my experience and can be taken with a grain of salt, Petricolas can breed all year long I think the reason why they breed more in the winter months because of the huge temp. Change and maybe the seasonal change, also the time of year where its start raining, when I got my original 5 fish it was also winter time l bought them from a guy in Northern California I had to stay overnight in up north because the PCCA meetings ends late. The fish endured another 7-hour drive back home and they end up in a small tank l believe it was a 5 gallon tank to quarantine them and to my amazement they spawned. So all I did was trigger them with clean warm water.

I use two heaters one set about 72-74F and the other one around 78-80F fish where originally bred in 30 gallon flats then later to ten gallon tanks don’t do water change for a month or two when the females are visibly gravid do 110% water change clean the sponge filter, make sure you use a finer mesh sponge filter because the fry would get stuck in the larger mesh, wipe down the entire tank the cleaner the tank the better the hatch rate, add an air stone, cover the bottom of the tank with Mexican river rocks and plug the warmer heater, a friend of mine used the green filter floss that Eheim used for their canister filter, the next morning they would have spawned then move them in the next tank then the whole cycle goes on. The eggs start hatching 18 hrs. Later, the eggs are very tiny as you can see on the pictures the black line on the eggs is a hair strand it may sound simple but it has worked for me for several years and a few thousand petricolas produced with just 2 males and 2 females .

One female can produce about a thousand eggs if you can count how many eggs in the picture you get a price, I would say half of the eggs would hatch I have tried adding methylene blue in the tank but still get the same result I do paint the tanks side and bottom black and keep it dark.

It seems like there are many people that are stuck to the idea of Synodontis petricola not being able to eat newly hatched brine shrimp, if you think about it, this fish comes from Lake Tanganyika where the Synodontis multipunctatus comes from in where it could eat eggs much larger than itself below are pictures of 5-6 day old petricola eating powdered food this is the stage where they would start eating, I use Mike Reeds no BS fry food, it comes in fine powder and a larger size when they get a little bigger, you can get it from www.mreed.com, I used to feed them newly hatched brine shrimp but later found out it was much easier to just squirt some powdered food in the tank with them, I also feed them cyclop eeze the red powdered food. there growth rate is all dipendent on food, water change, and temperature.


Dan, the filter floss is used to separate the eggs so that the breeders would not eat them you do not have to use the floss this is what my friend used to breed his fish I use river rocks because marbles will roll around the tank when you start removing them, if you catch them when they are in breeding frenzy you don’t even need the floss or rocks because they are very pre-occupied with breeding, but then you have to net them out as soon as they are done most of the photos where taken in the year 2002 back then I was using a 30 gallon flat tank, I just started breeding my petricola now after 3 years of not breeding, the breeders where left at a friends tanks and apparently there is only one pair left of the original 4 fish and a lot of there fry that are larger than the parents, I am having a hard time with them as well but I am breeding the fish in ten gallon tanks, I am lucky if I get 50 fry, I'm not worried about that though.

Well hopes it helps .
But still you should first try to breed them "normaly" then you can try to mess around.

[tomr]

Age of the fish is most important. Some times when mine wont spawn, i unplug heater for a day or so, that seems to work.

[walleye1]

What is the age before you can get them to spawn? Is it 3-4 years? I have little 2" cats now. I'm guessing they should be at least a year old at 2". Is there a way to guess the age of syno lucipinnis by there size? I'm just wondering how long I'll have to wait.

Steve

[leftcenter]

Hi,
I believe they should be about 4 years old before they start spawning, i have a group of 11, and they spawn about every 3 weeks almost like clockwork, i feed them new life spectrum cichlid formula 2 - 3 times a day and keep my water at 79 degrees. They are so tiny it seems getting the eggs is the easy part, i just spent 5 hours counting out over 150 eggs last night I never did the uplift tube deal but im sure it could work too. I have the caves set up just like you have, with black and blue marbles but i dont think they care about the color, the darker marbles just help me see the eggs. Like i was saying they are tiny and once they wiggle then comes the hard part i feed them crushed new life spectrum 4-5 times a day and at 3 weeks old they are like 1/4 inches long max maybe lol